DISCLAIMER: I still don't own Harry Potter
A VANE TALE
Harry knew there had to be an explanation for where Malfoy went when he disappeared off the map. Maybe he could trail him using the Invisibility Cloak, or at least Harry would have tried if his schedule wasn't so full of homework, Quidditch and Apparition. He'd have to work out some way to track Malfoy down.
"I'll meet you downstairs," Harry said to Ron, "Lavender is probably waiting to meet you in the common room." Harry grimaced as he left the dormitory, leaving Ron to tear his way through the few remaining presents he had, thinking about how Hermione was really struggling to get over Ron and Lavender's relationship. He supposed that he didn't much like it either.
Harry entered the common room to see Lavender standing near to the portrait hole, looking a little impatient. "Hey Harry. Is Ron coming down now?" She pouted slightly. "If he isn't down soon we'll be missing breakfast, even if it is a Saturday."
Harry imperceptibly sighed. Lavender could be quite frustrating with how she constantly demanded Ron's presence. Harry was glad that at least one other girl wasn't hopelessly infatuated with him, but it seemed that if it wasn't him being obsessed over, it had to be some other guy.
Harry and Lavender waited for a few more moments and just as Harry began to wonder if he should head up to check on Ron, he heard a pounding on the staircase leading down from the dormitory. Ron appeared at the bottom of the staircase and stepped out into the common room, immediately scanning the room, obviously looking for Lavender. Or maybe not so obviously, since his eyes passed right over Lavender and it wasn't until he had looked over the whole common room that he shook his head and started heading to the portrait hole.
"You're late Won-Won!" Lavender exclaimed playfully, breaking into a smile. "I've got you your birthday-"
"Not now," Ron interrupted Lavender, "I have to go and find her. I need to tell her how I really feel!"
Ron almost ran out of the common room, and turned to rush down the stairs. Harry and Lavender stood there, shocked for a moment. Then Lavender turned to Harry, her face flushed with anger.
"Who is he talking about?" Lavender whispered menacingly, jabbing a finger at him. Then she nearly screeched at Harry, "is that buck-toothed Granger trying to steal Ron away from me?"
"I have no idea what is going on, I swear," Harry said, before he turned angry himself, "and don't say stuff like that about Hermione."
Lavender stomped her foot and strode out of the common room. Harry began to follow her and although he really didn't know what was going on, he did hope that Ron was finally going to talk with Hermione. The rift between them was making Harry's friendships very difficult to manage.
xXx
Harry walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, scanning across the tables for Ron and Hermione. He spotted Hermione about half way down, but Ron wasn't with her. Instead Ron was standing behind a group of female fourth year students at the far end of the table, looking incredibly nervous. He seemed to be attracting quite a bit of attention.
When Harry reached where Hermione sat at the Gryffindor table, he leaned in to talk to her as she also watched Ron's curious mannerisms.
"Do you know what Ron is doing up there?" Harry asked Hermione.
"No idea. What would he need to talk with fourth years about?" Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Lavender seems annoyed that Ron is ignoring her."
Harry looked across and slightly down the table to where Lavender sat, glaring daggers at Ron. Looking back again, Harry saw Ron talking rapidly to the fourth years, as if this was a Quidditch match and he was breaking down in nerves. Harry stood and approached Ron and the girls, seeing his redhead friend blushing uncontrollably.
"-sorry to just drop this on you like this," Harry caught Ron saying, "but I just realised this morning just how much you meant to me. I can't believe I've never approached you before, but Romilda, I- I think I'm in love with you."
The air at the breakfast table suddenly seemed thicker. The once bold black haired girl was suddenly blushing a dark red. Harry honestly didn't think that Romilda had ever been caught speechless before.
Ron rushed ahead to fill the sudden silence. "I feel like there is something between us, I think if you give us a chance to see where this goes, it could be something amazing." Ron began grinning like a loon.
Romilda seemed incredibly uncomfortable with all this, but seemed be living up to the Gryffindor courage when she said, "Uh, its Ronald Weasley, right?
Despite the fact the person he was 'in love' with seemed unsure of what his name was, Ron's face cracked into an even wider grin and he nodded vigorously. "Yeah, that's me!"
"Uh, right, okay. Well you see Ronald, the thing is that we like, haven't ever spoken before. It's just kind of weird how you think you know me, or even love me." Harry thought that was a bit rich from the person who had apparently become infatuated with him, despite only reading about him in newspapers. Romilda and some of her friends had even been caught stalking Harry a few times that year. The irony was obviously lost on Romilda though, as she said to Ron, "I don't think that we would really work out."
Ron looked heartbroken, which left Harry really confused. Was Ron actually being serious about this? As far as Harry knew, Ron hadn't even met Romilda until today and he had definitely kept any feelings for her secret from Harry.
"But, I thought-" Ron cut himself off as he steeled himself. "Romilda, I- Man, I wish you would give me a chance."
Romilda's eyes fell to the floor in embarrassment, although some of the other Gryffindor's around were barely repressing their sniggers. When Romilda raised her eyes again, she looked around franticly for something to distract everyone with. Her eyes found Harry, who was still looking between Ron and Romilda with a bewildered expression. Romilda's face however, lit up when she caught sight of Harry and she nearly leaped out of her seat to get to him.
"Oh, hi Harry. How are you doing today?" Then Romilda threw on a roguish grin. "Have you come to ask me out too? I just might say yes you know."
Harry gaped at her for just a moment before he turned to look at Ron, who had been watching Romilda the whole time. The moment Ron's eyes met Harry's, Ron's face contorted in rage. Harry was so confused at this point that he would have much preferred Voldemort to just fly in on a dragon and carry him off for some crazy ritual.
"What the hell Harry? You're trying to take Romilda away from me," Ron spat out venomously. "You're meant to be my best mate, but then you go and do something like this right in front of me. And on my birthday too! Oh you are just-"
Ron let out a yell of nothing in particular and just launched himself at Harry, who didn't even think to get out the way. The redhead smashed into Harry, throwing him across the table, scattering bacon and eggs in every direction. Ron leapt up onto the table and started hurling dishes of food at Harry, punctuating his attacks with hate filled phrases.
"Meant – to be – my – friend. Steal – the girl – right – from me." Ron was flushed with anger and exertion. "Can't – believe – I ever – trusted – you!" With that said Ron jumped on Harry's battered frame and hit him over the head with a large serving plate. The last thing Harry saw before he lost consciousness was teacher's rushing up to where Ron was attacking him, surrounded by gaping Gryffindors and laughing Slytherins, and then everything went black.
xXx
Harry woke up in the infirmary with a mild headache. Hermione, Luna and Neville all sat around him, with Madam Pomfrey above him, having just cast an Enervate to wake him up.
"What happened?" Harry asked, as Pomfrey cast a few more charms on him before wandering off to her office.
Luna was the first to respond. "Oh, the Wrackspurts have been breeding heavily recently and they managed to catch Ron pretty badly last night by the look of it," she stated in her serene tones.
Hermione's eyes bugged out for a moment, but Neville just smiled lightly at what Luna had said. "I thought that you might have had a better idea about just what caused all that than us, Harry, but maybe not," Neville said.
"I don't know what Ronald was thinking, attacking you like that," Hermione said. She gave Harry a compassionate look. "Are you alright? You don't have any lingering pains? Ron did quite a bit of damage before he ran out of the hall."
"I've got a bit of a headache, but not much else," Harry explained, before he turned his memory of events over in his head. "It seems like Ron fell in love with Romilda Vane at some point and didn't see fit to tell any of us about it. You have any idea where all this came from?"
"Nope. After you left the dormitory this morning, Ron just sat there after he had finished opening up his presents. I was still getting ready," Neville paused, but continued with a confused expression, "and then Ron asked me if I had ever been in love, because he didn't know what to do to approach this girl he liked. I was a bit confused, 'cause I thought he was going out with Lavender, but I said he was probably best off just telling the girl how he felt." Neville smiled again and turned to Hermione. "I thought he might have been talking about you actually."
"Huh," was all that Hermione said to that.
"Anyway, he told me 'thanks' and then went to rush down the staircase after that. I wasn't that far behind him, but I guess he was really rushing because the common room was empty by the time I got down there."
By this point Luna had apparently become bored with the conversation, since she had put her Spectrespecs on and was attempting to levitate herself to catch the invisible Wrackspurts floating in the air. Harry was absently following her progress before Hermione grabbed his attention.
"Harry, what did you ever do with those Chocolate Cauldrons Romilda gave you?"
"Huh? What do you mean?" Harry was a little thrown by Hermione's rather obscure question. "The ones she gave me before Christmas? I think I put them away in my trunk."
And that's when everything clicked into place. Oh man, why did Ron have to just eat everything that he could see? It was a rather embarrassing trait to have, especially when it caused you to consume love potions that you weren't even a target for in the first place.
"Damn. You're right Hermione. Love potion, of course, I don't know how I didn't see it," Harry said as his confusion evaporated. "Is that really what would have happened to me if I had actually eaten what Romilda gave to me?" Harry shuddered at the thought.
Hermione looked solemn at this, Neville confused and Luna- well actually Luna seemed to be completely ignoring any interaction at the moment as she hovered seven feet in the air and was drawing a net made of golden magical lines with her wand. Harry tried to keep his mind focused on the topic at hand, rather than what Luna was doing up there.
"Well, if Ron has been poisoned with love potion, I guess we need to find some way to administer an antidote." Hermione sighed dejectedly. "We best get down to a potions classroom and see if we can't brew up a cure."
Harry had a mild grin on his face at that. "Looks like the Prince might actually be some use here after all, hmm, Hermione?"
Hermione made a face, but it was Neville who spoke, "I think that we'll need to find Ron as well to get him cured. He kind of ran out and disappeared after he knocked you unconscious, Harry."
A few minutes later, they got Pomfrey to discharge Harry, although she seemed quite distracted by Luna, who at this point had created a wireframe miniature castle in mid air that fired cartoon cannonballs out of the sides.
"You coming with us Luna?" Harry said as they all headed for the door.
Luna didn't look up as she was drawing a wireframe magic wheel into existence. "No, not yet Harry, but thanks. I need to prepare for the siege on The Hidden Room. I'll catch up with you all later."
None of the other three tried to understand what went through Luna's head sometimes.
xXx
Lavender was having a pretty bad day.
Her boyfriend was really acting up and he would pay for it, for sure. But first she needed to find him, and then tell him off, and then they could make-up through make-out. Oh, it would just be great. But where was he?
She ran down the third floor corridor for the second time, passed a group of Gryffindors and went to turn the corner, when she saw a small movement from an alcove off to the side. She even thought she saw a wisp of red hair.
Lavender hurried over to the archway that Ron was hiding in and was about to ask him what he was doing, but hands shot out and grabbed her, pulling her into the alcove, out of sight. Lavender felt a thrill run through her at what she and Ron were going to be doing, alone and out of sight like this. Ron, however, obviously wasn't thinking on the same lines as her. The moment she was hidden from the corridor, he pressed a finger to his lips and then continued sneaking glances out at the corridor.
"Ron, what are you doing?" Lavender felt anger bubbling up inside her again at her boyfriend's lack of attention. "Why are you acting so weird today?"
"Shhh!" Ron whispered at her harshly, "if you don't keep quiet, she'll hear me and then I'll have to think up a new plan."
"Who are you talking about Ron?" Lavender asked, keeping her voice low, but infusing it with some menace as well.
"Romilda Vane, of course." Ron took on a hopeful expression as he thought about his 'love'. "I just know that we are meant to be together. We're soul mates, we'll be together forever; I just need to make her see it first."
Lavender would have slapped him at this point, but she was stuck in a state of complete disbelief. Ron was obviously following Romilda around in his insane infatuation. "What the hell, Ron? You don't love her, you love me! She's not even that good looking anyway."
Ron spun to confront Lavender fully. Although still in quiet tones, his voice filled with fury, "don't you dare talk about her like that. She is worth a hundred of you!"
"Ron, snap out of this now, or I'm going to go tell her that you are following her around."
Ron had his wand out in an instance, pointing straight at Lavender. "I can't let you do that, you'd ruin my plan."
Lavender looked at the wand with a guarded expression. "And just what would your plan be?" she asked, and for the first time a little fear slipped into her voice. Ron was actually being serious about this; it was like he had just gone completely insane.
"We're going to run away together of course. When we're alone, we'll be able to show each other how we really feel." Ron grinned manically, but it didn't comfort Lavender in the slightest. The next moment Lavender moved to get past Ron, to escape, get away from her crazy boyfriend.
But Ron wouldn't be having that. It was obvious to him that Lavender was trying to get in the way of true love. She was the text book villain and he knew she needed to be stopped if he was to get his fairy tale ending. Before Lavender could even shout for help, Ron cast a stunner, sending Lavender crashing to the ground. He quickly bound her with an Incarcerous, using the ropes that he had conjured to drag her further into the alcove. Hopefully she wouldn't be too easy to see from the corridor and no one would be looking too hard for her, but Ron cast a silencing charm on her as well so that she wouldn't be able to call for help when she woke up again.
He felt sad that it had come to this, but he knew that there wasn't a limit for what you would do for your true love. No matter what, him and Romilda would be together.
xXx
Romilda was having a pretty weird day.
The Incident with Ron Weasley that morning had kicked off a lot of gossip in Gryffindor and had become an excellent source for comedy material across the other houses. It felt nice to have centre stage for the events at Hogwarts for once, even if it was through a bizarre event.
Also her friends had started acting weird a little while ago, since randomly during their Harry-Hunt today (something which was very different to the version Dudley Dursley had come up with), one of her friends would suddenly stopped with a glazed eyed look. They would then suddenly remember something that they needed to be doing immediately, before hurrying off. After this had happened four times, leaving Romilda wandering the hallways alone, she wondered if there was something that she also should be remembering, but she couldn't think of anything. She guessed it didn't matter in the end; it might even be for the best, since Harry might prefer to be alone with her if she did manage to find him today.
As she daydreamed, she found herself alone in the seventh floor corridor and began humming a tune to herself. Oh, the things that Harry and she would do alone together... It brought a smile to her face.
"You have a really pretty smile," a voice said from off to the side.
Turning to see Ron Weasley didn't exactly keep her smiling though. Upon seeing him, her brow furrowed and she asked, "What are you doing here?"
Ron broke out in a grin and his eyes sparkled with hope. "I came to meet with you alone. I cast a few Confundus charms on those other girls so that they would leave us to be together." Ron's voice hitched a bit, but he carried on. "I know you didn't really mean what you said this morning. I shouldn't have sprung it on you while there were so many other people around. But it's okay now, 'cause we're alone here."
Ron's smile grew wider as he stepped up to Romilda. Romilda's eyes widened as Ron stepped up to her, and she looked up at him. Merlin, he was tall.
"U-uh Ronald," Romilda stuttered, "I really don't think there is anything between us. Where did all this come from?"
Ron frowned, trying to work out how to explain. "I just love you, Romilda. Why is that so hard to understand?" Ron moved closer to her and he slid a hand round her waist.
"Don't touch me!" Romilda shrieked, backing up.
"Ron, stop!"
Both Romilda and Ron turned to look down the corridor to where a red faced Neville was rushing up to them. Ron looked hurt about Romilda's rejection, but prepared his wand again as Neville approached. As far as he knew, everyone was out to destroy his and Romilda's special connection.
Panting heavily, Neville managed to gasp out, "Ron, we think you might have taken the love potion that Romilda spiked some Chocolate Cauldrons with. They were meant for Harry, but I think I saw you eating some this morning."
Romilda blushed at the thought of Harry working it out. She had been more than a little frustrated when Harry took Loony Luna of all people to that Christmas party. Looking across at Ron though, the whole morning began to make sense.
"Uh, yeah, um, well I'm sorry Ronald, but I think that might have been what happened," Romilda said, hoping that this episode would finally be over.
Ron though, didn't think it was over. Far from it. "Don't listen to him, Romilda! This is a dirty trick." Ron flushed with rage. "They've tricked you because they don't want us to fall in love! Don't worry, love, I swear I'll fix this."
Ron grabbed hold of Romilda's arm and began dragging her away. Romilda began shrieking and yelling, trying to get Ron to let her go. By the time Neville pulled out his wand, Ron was already firing stunners at him. The last thing Neville saw before the red yet of light hit him was Ron dragging the scared fourth year off.
xXx
Compared to what he had dealt with in his life, Harry was having a relatively pretty mild day.
Admittedly, the getting knocked unconscious hadn't been particularly pleasant, but at least there hadn't been any lasting marks and there hadn't been any deaths. Well, not that he knew of. And the day was still young. By midnight he'd probably witness Snivellus kill someone in cold blood.
But for the time being at least, things were relatively calm. Harry and Hermione were in the potions lab and were brewing up a general cure to love potions, making heavy use of the notes from the Prince (albeit grudgingly in Hermione's case). Neville had left a little while ago to go track down Ron and they hadn't seen Luna since they left the infirmary. The potion was a deep purple, indicating that it was nearly done, but neither Harry nor Hermione knew how they were going to get Ron to take it when they found him.
As they finished up the potion and bottled it up, Neville came back into the lab, a bruise swelling on his head. Before either Harry or Hermione could ask what happened to him, Neville blurted out, "Ron just kidnapped Romilda!"
Harry and Hermione stood mouths agape. "WHAT!?" Hermione shrieked.
A few minutes later, the trio was back up in the boys' sixth year dormitory and Harry was searching the Marauder's map thoroughly. After Neville had explained how Ron had attacked him and dragged Romilda off, they knew that Ron needed to be found before the love potion made him do something even worse.
"As far as I can see it, there are only two explanations for this." Hermione was using her lecture talk speed to try and rid herself of the stress of the situation. "Either the love potion has matured horribly in the last few months, making it even more potent and gaining some pretty serious mental side effects-"
"Woh, wait, love potions get stronger if you leave them alone?" Harry asked, stunned at the idea. "Why wouldn't people who make them just leave them to age for a while?"
"Well, I guess it must be some sort of problem with storing some potions for long term used," Hermione looked puzzled, as if she sensed that wasn't really right. There were plenty of potions that just stayed on the shelf for months or even years at a time and they could be used just fine.
Harry was worried instead for his Felix Felicis, which was something he really didn't want to go bad. That would have made the expensive and difficult to make potion essentially worthless.
"What's the other explanation?" Neville queried Hermione.
"It could just be that, uhm, this is what Ron is actually like when he is in love." All three of them cringed at the idea.
Harry continued looking across the map, but still couldn't find him anywhere. "This is so frustrating! I know that Ron knows about the map, but how did he work out how to circumvent it? The map doesn't lie! Even an invisibility cloak can't fool it. I swear that Malfoy is the only other person who doesn't show up on it like this." Just as Harry said it, he caught sight of the name 'Draco Malfoy' walking along the seventh floor corridor.
But then Malfoy stopped and started going back the other way. And then he reversed again. And again. Harry took on a bemused expression as he considered Malfoy walking back and forth like that. Maybe the map was glitched.
Okay it was definitely glitched; Malfoy had just disappeared off the map completely.
"Wow, okay, we can't use the map, it's busted," Harry said. "It just showed Malfoy disappearing from the seventh floor corridor-" Harry stopped short as the location that Malfoy had vanished from clicked with an idea. "Of course, Malfoy has been going to the Room of Requirement! I never noticed, because it doesn't show up on the map. Now we just need to work out what he is up to in there-"
Hermione cut Harry off and refocused his attention on the problem at hand. "That might even be where Ron is right now. Come on, let's go check it out."
xXx
Draco was having a pretty frustrating day.
The Vanishing Cabinet he had been trying to fix was still showing no signs of improvement and Dumbledore apparently either didn't want to drink the oak-matured mead that he got for Christmas or Sluggy just hadn't thought to give it to him in the first place. Whatever, if Slughorn wanted to keep the poisoned drink to himself, he was more than welcome to it. Draco would just need to find yet another way to get to Dumbledore.
Having stopped working on the Cabinet for lunch, Draco returned to the Room of Treasures and travelled deeper inside to get back to work for the day. Maybe today was the day he could finally call in the other Death Eaters as backup-
Abruptly, Draco realised he could hear voices from inside the room, although they were coming from the other side of a giant pile of junk. It sounded like a girl and- Was that Weasley? Draco slowly crept around to investigate.
"Ronald, please I don't know why you are doing this. If you really cared about me like you say you do you wouldn't be doing this to me," the girl said.
"You don't understand. They've tricked you Romilda, probably a Confundus or something." It definitely sounded like Weasley, but what the hell was he doing with this girl in here? "And I told you, all my friends call me Ron."
Draco peered around the corner and saw Weasley standing off against the fourth year Gryffindor 'Romilda'. "Weasel," Draco said under his breath.
Obviously not quietly enough, since the moment he said it, Weasley spun around and yelled, "Watch out Romilda! They've come at us again and are trying to break us apart. I'll protect you." Weasley already had his wand out and pointing at Draco when he yelled, "CONFRINGO!"
Draco leapt back out of the way of the blasting curse, scrambling out of Weasley's line of sight so that he would have a chance to pull his wand and return fire. More spells flew at Draco as he took cover. Weasley threw a Reducto that took out a chunk of the junk pile Draco was next to and suddenly there was a ton of clutter falling down upon him. He managed to throw a few spells at Weasley before he was crushed under the weight.
xXx
Harry watched as Neville made his sixth attempt at opening up the room to the three of them. So far all of their attempts to create a doorway had failed, since they had no idea what Ron could have asked for. In all likelihood he had asked for something which would be hidden from other people, which would stop the trio getting in at all.
"You know, if anyone sees you walking back and forth like that, they would think you were very strange." Luna said as she came round the corner of the corridor.
"Hey Luna. We're trying to get into the Room of Requirement to cure Ron of the love potion," Harry said. Then Harry saw what Luna had brought with her and his mouth hung open.
"Yes, I thought I would come and help out," Luna said in her normal serene way. It was much more successful at weirding everyone out though, since it understated the life-size battering ram at Luna's side, which was made entirely out of the magical wireframe lines she had been using earlier.
Harry heard Hermione muttering under her breath how Luna needed to teach her that, but he was suddenly too busy grinning to really be put off by the thought of learning. "Luna that is awesome. Will it get us into the Room?"
"I think so. Daddy was going to do a series of articles a few years back about siege warfare, but he had to scrap in when Nargles stole all his work. That's when the Quibbler started focusing on magical creatures a bit more. I think this should be strong enough to get through."
The battering ram lined up to the wall and swung inwards. Despite appearing to be constituted mostly of empty space, it left an impressive dent in the wall, as well as making a lot of noise in the hallway. Luna flicked her wand and suddenly the ram was swinging back and forth about twenty times a second. The wall rapidly split into cracks through which light shone and within moments the wall had a sizeable hole knocked out of it.
Luna flicked her wand again and her wireframe battering ram stopped swinging back and forth. Hermione looked bewildered at how Luna had just managed to just break down the wall (although Harry suspected it was more to do with damaging Hogwarts being against the school rules). Harry pulled out his wand, being wary of how Neville described Ron's attack and stepped through the hole in the wall. He found himself in cavernous room, filled to the ceiling with piles of objects hidden by generations of past Hogwarts inhabitants. The various towers of treasures and junk were broken up by pathways which a person could use to navigate the giant room. Harry found himself, along with Hermione and Neville, gaping at the sheer volume of clutter that filled the place.
Luna, of course, was not fazed by any of this at all. "Shouldn't we be looking for Ronald now? Goodness knows what he would do if left to his own devices."
The others shook themselves out of their stupors and began advancing through the room. Harry listened intently for any indication of where Malfoy or Ron could be. None of them were absolutely sure that Ron was actually in the room, but they considered it a good a guess as any.
Due to their slow progress, it was a few minutes before they came across a pile of broken furniture which was strewn across the pathway they were walking. Harry was about to suggest turning back when he caught sight of a hand sticking out on the far side of the wreckage. Harry pointed it out to the others, climbed over and started levitating away the broken furniture. Seeing Malfoy's battered body after it had been crushed like this turned Harry's stomach, but he steeled himself and pulled Malfoy free of the clutter.
Laying Malfoy at the side of the pathway, Harry checked for a pulse, finding none. He felt a dull sort of emptiness at the thought of Malfoy being dead. They had been enemies in school, but not the sort that was of mortal peril to the other, even if he was a Death Eater. Harry decided to check whether his suspicion this year was really true and rolled up Malfoy's sleeve. Seeing the Mark burned onto his arm, Harry shuddered ever so slightly.
"Merlin, he really was a Death Eater. Why would he be so stupid to take the Mark and still come to school?" Neville said, seeing the Dark Mark. "Does he not realise that Dumbledore is the biggest opposition there is to Voldemort?"
Harry turned to see Neville and caught the look of anger on his face. Harry knew that Neville had just as much reason to hate Voldemort and his followers as he did, but he honestly still didn't feel good about the idea of killing in the war. Harry grimaced as he pushed those thoughts out of his head. It was war, killing was a part of that, whether he wanted to do it or not.
Harry caught a shimmer of red from behind Neville, but he didn't manage to shout out a warning before a stunner hit him and for the second time that day, Neville collapsed to the ground, knocking his head and gaining another bruise.
Harry threw up a shield before any more stunners could take out him, Luna or Hermione. Ron stepped out from behind another pile of junk another block down the pathway.
"Ron, you've got to stop. We just want to talk," Hermione just about begged. "You took a disguised love potion this morning and it's making you act in a way that isn't really you."
"You don't know what you are talking about Hermione. Voldemort has cast a school-wide Imperious or something because I know that what I feel for Romilda is real." Ron smiled lightly at his friends. "Don't worry; I worked out that a Memory Charm will get rid of the confusing thoughts. Romilda will help me explain when she wakes up. Here I'll show you. Obliviate!"
The spell flew the distance between them within a second, but all three of them managed to dodge. Then in conjunction, they all fired a stunner at Ron simultaneously. He managed to block one, but the other two caught him in the chest and leg, sending him crashing into a pile of books behind him (Harry wondered if Hermione could take any more of the trauma from this little adventure without having a nervous breakdown).
Harry and Hermione rushed over to Ron as Luna cast an Enervate on Neville. Harry held Ron's mouth open and Hermione poured the antidote down the unconscious redhead's throat. They both waited a few seconds, before Hermione said, "We should probably wake him up now."
Holding his breath, Harry nodded. Luna picked up Ron's discarded wand, while Neville clutched at his head and Harry aimed his wand at Ron. "Enervate"
xXx
It turned out to be quite the strange day at Hogwarts in the end. Between Slughorn and Snape both being found dead, one from a poisonous bottle of mead and the other from an unbreakable vow, Ron's crazy antics during the day were mostly overlooked. Dumbledore was doing his best to deal with the political ramification of a student and two teachers ending up dead on the same day, so Ron's questioning of the events was minimal.
Romilda was a little confused the next morning, when she woke to find she couldn't remember anything of the previous day. Nobody reminded her of Ron's declaration of love either, since the deaths around Hogwarts were the only point of gossip worth talking about. She didn't learn anything about the dangers of love potions in the end and would be caught stalking Harry with her friends many other times that year.
Ron found this hilarious, although Hermione found his reaction a little crass. She even made a resolution to herself that she would get over her silly crush of Ron, especially after seeing objectively how weird he got when falling in love.
Lavender and Ron made up in the end (with a lot of moaning and groaning too, if the gossip from Gryffindor is anything to go by). Harry was a little weirded out by just how forgiving Lavender was of Ron's actions, even if he was under a love potion.
Since Dumbledore had lost any hope of gaining Slughorn's memory of Tom Riddle, he summoned Harry to explain what he had theorised about Voldemort's immortality plan, even going so far as suggesting that Moldy Voldie was obsessed with the number seven. Harry was a little annoyed at the Headmaster, since he was still withholding information from him, even after his 'it's time to tell you everything' speech from last year. Since Snape would no longer be around to pass on the word, Dumbledore also had to explain that Harry, as he was a Horcrux, had to die. But then Dumbledore took pity on Harry and explained that Harry was pretty much immortal too, since Voldemort using his blood was keeping him bound to the plane of the living.
Harry took the news pretty well and suggested that he and Dumbledore spent as much time now hunting down Horcruxes as they could. Dumbledore explained how he had been cursed by the ring and would soon be dying without the potions that Snape had been providing, although he did tell Harry that the sword of Gryffindor could be used to destroy Horcruxes.
After he left Dumbledore's office after almost having an information overload, Harry wondered why on earth Dumbledore hadn't just told him all this at the beginning of the year. It would have saved a lot more time in the long run and would have negated the need for lessons which were incredibly rare.
Harry was still considering Dumbledore's secret keeping a few weeks later, when the ancient wizard's funeral was held. The curse had actually acted quite quickly in the end; after having been suppressed all year, it just unloaded on the old man. Afterwards, Harry called a meeting of the Order and decided that it was stupid to keep the information about Horcruxes to himself as Dumbledore had done. The whole war effort would be a lot more effective if the only important work load did not just fall to a sixteen year old boy.
Working in conjunction turned out pretty well, since the older Aurors in the Order had actually had some experience with Horcruxes before. Voldemort's incredible pickiness also helped a lot, since the possible items for Horcruxes was narrowed down incredibly by wizards and witches who could suggest items like the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw. From this Harry learnt an important lesson: being the chosen one does not mean that you must do all the work.
AN: I love weird stories that take the plot in ridiculous directions. Review the chapter and be picky with the grammar so it gets fixed!
Romilda accidentally poisons Ron, who kills Malfoy, which kills Snape, which gets Dumbledore killed without the potion. Therefore, Romilda killed Dumbledore